For high school lacrosse players who want to get to the next level, check out what Division I coaches have to say about the advantages of box lacrosse

Dom Starsia, the Head Coach at Virginia, expressed it best:

American field players would really help themselves if they were exposed to a steady stream of box experience. Box lacrosse is an extremely valuable background for a young player, we need to incorporate more of the indoor skills into the field game. It is almost a requirement to have a top player with indoor experience on your roster right now.

When you watch Canadian kids score, when you see their skill level around the cage, you wonder to yourself, ’jeez, are we teaching kids [in the US] the wrong thing?

Jaime Munro, former Head Coach at Denver agrees with Coach Starsia:

If box lacrosse were played by kids in the U.S. the way it is played in Canada, it would completely change the complexion of the game in terms of the quality of play and the balance of power. The trend of competitive balance at the DI level would be expedited. Now, the game is growing faster than ever, but one doesn’t see improvement in players from certain regions as expected with such large growth. Box Lacrosse would change all of that. You don’t have to be a good coach to make kids be better players in the box. Like a great drill, it just happens.

Denver Assistant Coach Matt Brown talked about the impact that a single season had on a number of club players who did not make the top team.

When I first started the box program down here, I took a group of kids that didn’t make our field program and gave them an opportunity to play box lacrosse. I told them it would give them a chance to work on their skills, constantly have a ball in their stick, get better, and most importantly have a lot of fun doing it. They all bought into it. In literally one year – the following September – all those kids that didn’t make our fall field team but were doing box training, jumped and surpassed our field-only kids. The players and their parents couldn’t believe the improvements, and then everyone wanted to incorporate box lacrosse into their training